District 5 Diary

Rob Anderson's commentary on San Francisco politics from District 5

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Adam Carolla: Regular guy as racist

Granted that Asian Week ("The Voice of Asian America") is not targeted at me and the grouchy old white guy demographic, but it's still an annoying publication. It's not just that all the stories are about Asians and all the pictures are of Asians, it's the assumption that these folks need this kind of a publication. Isn't the whole point of the US to assimilate people from every corner of the globe? Why cling to an often tenuous ethnic identity in a country where it isn't supposed to matter? Most of the people featured in Asian Week are Asian in the same way I'm European, that is, not at all. I've never been to Europe, and I'm not even particularly interested in going. But what if, say, Arthur Evans and I started a publication called "European American Week" that was all about white people? We would get a ration of shit.

The Feb. 17-23 edition of Asian Week caught me up short, however, reminding me why people of non-European ethnic origin might still band together in the Land of the Free. Adam Carolla, host of The Man Show on TV, now has a radio show, which, like the TV show, spreads misconceptions about the guy gender, that we care mostly about beer and sex, which is an exaggeration, more or less. Why would this clown be on the cover of Asian Week? It turns out that Mr. Regular Guy Carolla featured an ethnic slur on Asians on his radio show, mocking the Asian Excellence Awards by chanting "ching chong." Regular Guys are supposed to be racist? Wrong!

Asian Week put Carolla on its cover to express outrage at the slur, which was supposed to be funny. Inside there's an editorial and stories about how Asian Americans are demanding an apology and planning a boycott of CBS Radio, which airs the idiot's radio show. The moral of the story: People of differing ethnic origins sometimes still have to band together in the US to defend themselves against people like Carolla.

But at least this is a genuine issue, as opposed to the Save Japantown movement, which is really about preserving a tourism marketing strategy for a city neighborhood.

Adam Carolla's stupid mug is also ubiquitous of late on the sides of Muni buses in the city on those ads that cover the windows, forcing those of us who ride the bus to view our fair city through a grid of dots. Didn't Muni promise to stop doing this a few years ago? Now that Muni's deficit is almost gone and the city is in the black again, can't we afford to stop doing this? It shows contempt for us plebes who ride the bus. Maybe the mayor and the bigshots at MTA will paste Carolla's face over the windows of their limos and city-owned cars just to demonstrate that it's not a class thing. And maybe I'm the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla.